


Grief

by theoddling



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Discussion of death/loss, Gender-neutral Reader, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, Reminiscing, reference to dead parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26042086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoddling/pseuds/theoddling
Summary: In attempting to comfort Klaus after his time in Vietnam, you accidentally reveal feelings that have lay hidden for a very long time.
Relationships: (background) Klaus Hargreeves/Dave Katz, (past) Ben Hargreeves/Reader, Klaus Hargreeves & Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 59





	Grief

“Is this how you’ve felt all these years?” Klaus asked, hugging one of the throw pillows to his chest. “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

You looked at him sadly, nodding softly. He had just told you about his time in Vietnam, about Dave, and your heart ached for him.

“How do you do it?”

“You hold onto the happy memories and the time you had with them. You take deep breaths and you let yourself be sad sometimes, but you don’t let it drown you. I wish I could say it gets better but it doesn’t. You just find a way to keep moving forward and you get used to the pain; if it ever goes away I haven’t found that point yet.”

You stared up at the ceiling, fighting back tears. “And I don’t know if this helps, but at least you had the time _with_ him, you told him how you felt.”

“I think your mom knew how you felt about her…?” his confusion was palpable.

“Oh, you meant her…well that’s a different kind of grief.”

“Wait, if you didn’t think I was talking about losing your mom, who did you think I was…?”

You laughed incredulously, stopping quickly when you realized he really didn’t know.

“Klaus, I was hopelessly in love with your brother for years. I just didn’t think it was worth risking our friendship or making things weird with the rest of you to say anything. Biggest regret of my life, even if it probably wouldn’t have ever been something.”

“Why do you think it wouldn’t have been anything?”

You didn’t know it, but Klaus was staring at his brother’s stunned face over your shoulder.

“I wasn’t exactly subtle. I mean even _Luther_ noticed my stupid crush,” you shrugged. “I’m sure Ben ignored it in order to spare my feelings.”

There were few times Klaus truly hated his powers more than as he watched his brother reach out to you, knowing that he would pass right through and you wouldn’t even notice.

“Oh I don’t know, Y/N,” he said, hoping the ache in his voice was easy to write off as more of his general mood since returning to the present. “Ben was always shy. And never really thought much of himself, so he probably wouldn’t have ever guessed that you, or anybody, had a crush on him.”

You smiled bitterly, eyes stinging with tears. “Don’t, Klaus. It doesn’t help anybody to give me hope now. It just…hurts more.”

“I still see him sometimes,” Klaus admitted, withholding the fact that it was near constant and that Ben was a silent participant in your current conversation. “A lot actually. I could ask him, or give him a message or something, if you wanted.”

You shrugged, smiling softly despite the tears running down you cheeks unchecked. “I don’t even know what I’d say. Other than I miss him. Some days more than others…” You looked down, fiddling absently with your fingers. “It’s stupid, but I used to write him letters, whenever I saw something that reminded me of him or did something I wish I could have shared…”

Ben frowned, opening his mouth to speak, and Klaus shook his head softly, a warning that now wasn’t the right time, to let you finish baring your soul first.

“And my first night alone here in the apartment, surrounded in boxes and sitting on the floor because I hadn’t gotten the couch delivered yet, I tried to imagine him here too, like it was our place. We always talked about running away together, when things at the Academy were bad…”

“I think little touches of him made his way here anyway,” Klaus said softly, indicating the shelf full of the sorts of things Ben used to read all the time and talk to you about, even when you didn’t understand what he was saying, framed by curled tentacles.

You chuckled. “I got those bookends as a joke at a flea market.”

Ben was staring at the shelf. You had found copies of every one of his favorite books, and a few others that he hadn’t read but probably would have enjoyed. He reached up, trailing an incorporeal finger over the swirl shape of one of the plaster carvings.

“I like it,” he said softly.

“I thought maybe having things that reminded me of him would make it hurt less, you know, make it feel more like he was going to walk in any time and prop his feet on the coffee table and apologize for being gone for so long. And it’s stupid. There’s no reason for it. We were only ever friends, and dumb kids promising all the things dumb kids say before they really understand how the world works.”

You rubbed your hands over your face, trying to brush away the tears and the grief that were settling in there.

“I’m sorry Klaus,” you said, reaching out to take his hand comfortingly, watching the other fiddle with the dogtags around his neck as he stared into seemingly empty space. “I didn’t mean to derail the conversation.”

He jumped slightly at your touch, turning back to you with an apologetic look in his big, sad green eyes.

“No! No it’s fine,” he reassured you. “I don’t even know what to say about Dave. So listening to you talk about Ben…”

He swallowed guiltily as the pain he was probably causing you both dawned on him again. He took a deep breath to steady himself, closing his eyes to ignore the frantic gestures of his brother’s ghost.

“He’s here you know,” he offered finally, so quiet you barely heard him.

Your heart lurched. “Ben is here? For how long?”

“He’s been following me around like a Jiminy Cricket for years honestly. All the booze and drugs in the world haven’t been able to get rid of him.”

“Why…why didn’t you say anything?”

He shrugged. “I guess I never thought about it. Everyone seemed to be able to move on so I thought it would make things worse. If anyone even believed me, which they never do.”

“So if he’s here, and he’s been here, then he heard all of that…?” you bit your lip as a fresh wave of tears threatened, these ones mixing shame with the sadness, knowing that you had just accidentally spilled everything you had kept secret for all these years to the very person they were about.

“Klaus, you moron!” Ben shouted at him, making him wince. “If you weren’t going to say anything at the beginning, why would you say something now! It’s going to make things so much worse!”

“He’s sort of pissed at me for springing this on you now, and he says he likes the bookends…”

A small giggle bubbled up in your throat as you imagined Ben standing there, lecturing Klaus, as he frequently had during your youth. You could tell by Klaus’s facial expressions that they were now getting into a rather heated argument, and you stayed still, a silent witness to it, and tried to imagine your best friend’s face in the air beside your couch.

“I’m not telling them that!” Klaus whined. “That’ll make them cry again. Do you want to make them cry Ben?”

“What are you not telling me, Klaus?” you whispered.

Klaus clamped his jaw shut as he argued internally with himself as much as externally with Ben. Finally he sighed.

“Ben says that he’s…always loved you and always will. And that seeing you grow up and live your life and be happy is the best thing about being a ghost. He just wishes he could have been here to do it beside you.”

Your breath hitched, more tears spring to your eyes and coursing down your cheeks.

“But he also doesn’t want you to dwell so much on him. That time has passed, and you should…move on and find something present instead of being stuck on things that never got to be.”

“I…I don’t know if I can.”

“Ben says you can,” Klaus shrugged, wrapping you in his arms. “And I believe in you too.”

Unseen or felt by you, Ben did his best to join the hug, his own tears dripping into nothingness where they should have fallen in your hair.


End file.
